And you will be queen
by Clairethefair
Summary: I had to rewrite of the end of 3.08, to make Galex happen as it should and also to get out of my system my feelings about Keats! Why did Alex have to die? Why did Gene have to stay in purgatory? He didn't deserve it! He deserves happiness! Either to die with Alex or for Alex to stay and help him help 'new recruits' – at least for a while. That bloody beautiful amazing show :(


"You can't do this on your own, you need me Gene, I can't, I can't go in there!"

"Yes, you can"

"No!"

She flung herself into his arms.

"I won't!"

She clung onto him, and she realised he was clinging back onto her...his great body was shaking. His breath rattled in her ear. She suddenly realised – he was crying. Gene Hunt was crying. He'd seen enough, he'd done enough, he'd suffered enough for Christ's sake. He was younger than her when he was taken. She wasn't going anywhere. It was his turn to be protected for once.

Laughter. Cold, mirthless laughter. Familiar laughter that had always made her insides squirm, but only now did she realise it had been with repulsion and hatred. Keats. She felt sick at the memory of him touching her shoulders, her cheeks. He could not see Gene this way.

Her blood boiled. She pushed Gene away, behind her.

"You will not touch him again."

Her voice was cool. She had never realised that, drawn up to her full height in these red heels, Keats was shorter than her.

"What? Alex, I OWN him"

"No. Oh no Jim. You own nothing, and no-one. You aren't D&C are you?"

"D&C?" Keats scoffed. "D&C? I serve a far greater master, one who gives me _whatever I want! HA! Hahahahaaa!"_ His big, baby face and slack jaw had never looked so grotesque as it contorted.

Suddenly he lurched closer to her "and Alex, didn't you know? You're dead too Alex. You died 10 minutes ago now. 9.06am Alex. You're still in your hospital bed. Molly's just been told. She's coming to say goodbye."

She swayed slightly on the spot. But strangely, it wasn't a surprise. She'd known already. She'd known for a while.

His face was gleeful, triumphant. He'd been waiting and waiting, planning, plotting when and how to tell her this.

"So look at your Gene Genie now. Look how much time you've wasted on him. Look how pathetic he is – he couldn't shoot you properly, but he can't let you go on either. Pathetic."

Alex looked at Keats, for the first time. His uniform, his appearance in her coma and her knowing that he knew _something_ had blinded her to what he really was. She looked at him now as if she were assessing a new collar she and Gene had brought into the interview room. And she was not impressed.

Not even a very subtle criminal. Just a scared teenager with extreme difficulties relating to his peers and a severely wounded ego, probably from an overbearing father figure and an overindulgent mother. He could have done well and been happy working in IT...if he didn't have such a mean streak.

She didn't fear him any more, she only felt revulsion. Her heart beat, at last, for one person.

 _I love you Molly, forever. I'm sorry I couldn't go back to you._

"Hm. Whatever you want eh? Jim, you have nothing – no friends, no family, no love. You were the worst kind of cop weren't you? Stuck in the back room, pen pushing. That's no bad thing in itself, but you – you just sunk deeper and deeper into bitterness. Endlessly trying to get one over on the others in CID who could tackle cases you didn't have the brains or guts to solve. Fudging their paperwork and delaying forms to slow them down, because you were jealous."

"They needed me" Jim spat "They were nothing without me."

"And then you died. And now you bring all that bitterness over into this place. You haven't solved a crime in your life have you? Nor in your death. Even now you just slow down the work of good coppers."

"He's _nothing_ Alex. You're nothing." The gleeful expression was gone replaced by one of mania. His eyes were bright, doughy cheeks flushed. He looked just like an overexcited schoolboy.

"They didn't need you Jim. Accept that you wasted your life chasing something you never really were, or could be."

"Alex, listen to me. Alex. He has you ensnared." A bit of spit flew out of his plump, lispy mouth at the word, and with that, Alex had had enough.

"Shut up you pathetic mouth-breathing tosser. Quit with your fau cockney accent and blokey-matey ways and run back home to your middle-class family, if they'll take you!"

He shrunk. She sensed Gene behind her grow again, like a candle flame flickering back to life.

"Go home, James. Find your family. Stop serving your master. Stop ruining others' happiness because you have never had some of your own". She turned away from him.

With an anguished scream, Jim Keats was defeated. She heard the clang of a dustbin petulantly kicked, then retreating footsteps, mingled with curses.

"Alex"

He spoke so quietly, she wouldn't have known it was him.

He stood, silhouetted against the warm glow of the pub. The glow where Chris, and Shaz, and Ray, and Sam, and her Mum, and many others she'd loved, were, getting a round in. His face was in shadow, although his hair was backlit golden. He didn't look at her as he spoke.

"I'm shamed Alex. He was nothing – just a twerp. And a plonk twerp at that. But I let him have power over me. I let him get to me Alex!"

"Now you listen to me!" She knew her voice was cracking, squeaking like a child, but she had to be strong for him. "Listen!" Breathe, calm. She tried to look at him, but couldn't. She looked beyond, at the gap in the street where the stars were.

"We all make mistakes. We all have a weak spot... For some reason, Keats knew the truth about all of us – about this place. He knew how you died. But he _used_ that Gene, for ill, to make people suffer more, to tempt people to...well, God knows where."

"I kept Ray, Chris and Shaz, Bols. I kept them with me too long. I beat them down too much."

"But they were adults too Gene! They were fighting demons _too!_ And you were younger than _all_ of them when - when you died. You're younger than me!" A sudden chuckle swept through her at the thought.

"Well don't go rubbin' it in". A smile caught the corners of his mouth, but then faded.

"I kept you too Bols. You should be allowed to go. To - to move on." For the first time in days – maybe months, years even - he looked at her. Really looked at her.

She felt as if she was looking straight through those clear blue eyes and into his soul. She could almost see his beating heart, waiting – expecting - to be trodden on, crushed, broken, again. Feeling he deserved it. But beating still.

He tried to straighten up, to turn and face her, but couldn't quite manage it. She realised it was this – not Keats, not losing his powers, or his station - which had been slowly killing him. It had been the fear of losing her.

The tears sprung into her eyes and spilled over. Tears for him, for his pain, for his bravery. But tears of joy too.

She took a deep breath "If you think you could have 'kept' me anywhere, you've got another thing coming, Gene Hunt."

"Alex Drake."

And they moved to each other. And they kissed. And it was as if finally they'd both found the key to their own front door which had been lost for a long, long time.

He took her in his arms, they kissed again. Her hands found his cheeks, his hair. His tightened around her waist. After a while, they parted. And that was the end of the beginning.

"I want to stay here with you" she said. But it was a formality now. He knew.

Sometime later, after a few pitchers of wine at Luigi's, when he was carrying her up the stairs (although he was lurching alarmingly from wall to wall), she said

"You know, you've fought so many demons, alone, and won. You've lead the charge again and again, but you don't need to keep doing that if you don't want to. You don't have to be alone any more, Gene. You've earned it at last."

"Shush Bols and get yer key out before I break down this door!"

"Were you even listening to a word I said just then?" she twisted in his arms as she tried to open the zip to her bag.

"Yep. You say I've earned it. Well, good things come to those who wait, I suppose."

He set her down on her feet, and, keeping his arms around her, extricated her key from the back pocket of her jeans and placed it in the lock.

"And I must have been waiting a bloody long time, because I've got the best."

They grinned into eachothers' faces, then tumbled through the door and into the flat.

THE END.


End file.
